- Notes, cautions, and warnings
- Revision history
- Introduction
- VxRail components and features
- VxRail Manager Overview
- Manage VxRail entitlements
- Manage VxRail passwords
- Administrative tasks
- Replace and add VxRail hardware
- Set up external storage for a dynamic node cluster
- Reboot nodes sequentially
- VMware products used with VxRail
Dell VxRail 7.0.x Administration Guide
VxRail cluster overview
VxRail consists of server nodes that are designed and engineered for VxRail. A VxRail cluster depends on adjacent ToR Ethernet switches to support cluster operations. You can customize and allocate the nodes to applications and services that are based on defined business and operational requirements. All physical compute, network, and storage resources in VxRail are managed as a single shared pool.
Local disk drives on each node are used to form a VMware vSAN data store as the primary storage resource for application workloads. You can also customize the nodes without local disk drives to use external data center resources for primary storage.
VxRail supports the following types of clusters and satellite nodes:
| Cluster or node | Description |
|---|---|
| VxRail cluster with VMware vSAN | VxRail cluster with VMware vSAN is known as the standard cluster with a minimum of three nodes and can scale to 64 nodes. All the nodes provide the physical compute and storage resources to support the application workload. Every slot in the node contains disk drives that meet performance and capacity requirements for the application workload. When the cluster is initialized, the nodes are formed into a local VMware vSAN data store. You can expand the cluster with additional compute and storage resources.
VMware vSAN supports VMware vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA). VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) is supported for VxRail 8.0.x. VxRail 8.0.010 does not support VMware vSAN ESA. |
| VxRail dynamic node cluster | A dynamic node VxRail cluster starts with a minimum of two nodes and can scale to a maximum of 64 nodes. Dynamic clusters do not have local drives and instead use the following external storage resources to support workload and applications:
|
| VxRail stretched cluster with VMware vSAN | Supports synchronous I/O on a local VMware vSAN data store on two sites that are separated geographically. The VMware vSAN stretched cluster enables site-level failure protection with no loss of service or loss of data. The VMware vSAN stretched cluster requires a witness for monitoring and the strict network guidelines. See the VxRail Architecture Overview for more information. |
| VxRail 2-node cluster with VMware vSAN | Supports small-scale deployments with reduced workload and availability requirements with two nodes. The two-node cluster also requires a witness and strict network guidelines. You can convert a two-node ROBO cluster to a standard VxRail three-node cluster and then expand to 64 nodes. |
| Satellite node | A centrally located VxRail cluster monitors and manages satellite nodes that are deployed locally and remotely. Satellite nodes use the same PowerEdge servers as the other VxRail cluster types and the same engineering, qualification, and manufacturing processes. VxRail Manager supports the software LCM of satellite nodes. Satellite nodes require a single IP address to enable connectivity to a central cluster. |
See the Dell VxRail Network Planning Guide for more information about VxRail clusters.
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